Legal humor. Seriously.

Posts from March 2007

March 31, 2007

On Friday, LAPD Chief William Bratton unveiled new police flashlights powered by LEDs rather than standard bulbs. The new flashlights are brighter, use less power, need fewer batteries, and so can be made smaller than the two-pound, two-foot model that was previously standard-issue. While some praised the new high-tech, ten-inch model 7060 LED flashlight, others may be lamenting the loss of the good old Mark One Combined Photon Emission Unit/Kinetic Individual-Suspect-Control Device.

That is, the new flashlights will be harder to beat people with.

That's exactly why the old ones were banned. According to the report, the idea for the LED coplight "was conceived just days after" the media captured and broadcast images of police using the Mark One to beat a car-theft suspect. The smaller, brighter flashlight thus fits perfectly with the department's plans to deploy smaller, brighter policemen.

As you might expect, the ACLU chimed in on this story, and its executive director for southern California emitted one of the better quotes so far this year. "It's a really important step in the right direction," she said, "and it's going to make a difference in how the police department deals with the community. We've always felt that a flashlight was not an instrument to beat people with. This new one will serve the purpose it was intended to." Not an instrument to beat people with? Lady, if God didn't mean for us to beat people with portable electrical devices he wouldn't have made batteries so big and heavy. Anyway, flashlights don't beat people -- people beat people. Smaller flashlights just means more strokes per criminal.

Or, not necessarily, if the Model 7060 can be deployed in the right way. The report noted that it also features a "tactical mode," in which it becomes "bright enough to temporarily blind suspects." Its specially designed photons undoubtedly will leave innocent eyeballs intact.

March 30, 2007

Those of you who think that only dorks do cite-checking are . . . well, you're right, but unfortunately for you this is a dork-heavy profession. It's part of the job description. Case in point: whoever forgot to double-check a federal plea agreement with Walter Anderson, leaving the wrong statute cited therein, has potentially cost the government somewhere between $100 million and $175 million in restitution of unpaid taxes. Seems like a decent reason to proofread.

Anderson is a telecommunications entrepreneur who the government says also put those entrepreneurial skills to good use hiding income from the IRS. (It's a little humbling to note that this guy was able to hide almost half a billion dollars through a complicated setup of offshore corporations, and I'm still trying to figure out Schedule A.) Anderson was prosecuted for tax evasion, sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to repay $23 million to the District of Columbia.

But because the Justice Department listed the wrong statute in the plea documents, District Judge Paul Friedman said he could not order similar restitution to the federal government. "I've come to the conclusion," he said Tuesday, "very reluctantly, that I have no authority to order restitution. I hope the government will appeal me."

It probably will, although it seems to have its hands full these days. A spokesperson did say that the U.S. Attorney's office would bring civil charges against Anderson, using "ample civil remedies available to recoup the money which are, in some respects, more efficient and quicker," though presumably less efficient and slower in other respects.

During his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Anderson "appeared humbled but not overly apologetic." He "took responsibility for his actions but said he never intended to defraud the government" just because he didn't file tax returns on more than $450 million in income over five tax years. Anderson also said in his defense that the extra millions he kept weren't funding an opulent lifestyle. (Which strikes me as not a very good defense, but I'm not a tax attorney.) "For every time I ate in a nice restaurant," he said, "I also grabbed a doughnut or a burger in an airport. I could have wasted millions. I could have taken a limo everywhere." He even occasionally flew coach, for Christ's sake. What more can a man do?

Judge Frieman, unimpressed by Anderson's "could have wasted millions" defense, sentenced him near the top end of the possible range. With time served he will be out in less than six years.

Search engines are a vital part of modern life, at least for people like us who have computers and are able to hook them up to that series of tubes I call "the Internet." The amount of information search engines provide is staggering. But any tool can be used for good or evil, as shown by Kevin Fitzpatrick's use of a search engine for the relatively evil purpose of learning how to rob a bank in Norwich, Connecticut.

The Internet was heavily implicated in this scheme (although it denied any involvement when contacted for this story). Fitzpatrick seems to have used it first to meet a female "friend" who lived near the bank he planned to rob, and whose car he borrowed to carry out the robbery. According to the report, the two met on the Internet and had never met in person before Fitzpatrick showed up and asked to stay with her for a few days. Of course she said yes, because you can trust everyone you meet on the Internet enough to let them stay with you, and to borrow your car to go to the "casino."

That's where Fitzpatrick said he had been when he came back with the woman's car and a whole lot of cash. In fact, he had succeeded in robbing Liberty Bank, presumably using what he had learned on the Internet to do so. He then hung around with the woman for at least a while longer, which proved to be a mistake. The woman, who also used the Internet, saw a surveillance photo from the robbery on a newspaper's website, and recognized her guest. When she checked the search history on her computer, she saw a post-Norwich-bank-robbery search for "Norwich bank robbery," which she felt confirmed her fears. Could have been an innocent search for information, maybe, except for that surveillance photo and the fact that police found numerous pre-Norwich-bank-robbery searches on the computer concerning robberies. Among them: "how not to rob a bank." Whatever he found with that search evidently didn't cover the issue of not erasing your search history afterward.

The report did not identify the search engine that had entrapped Fitzpatrick by first tempting him to rob a bank, showing him how to do it and how not to do it, and then cynically apprehending him after he successfully used the information provided.

March 28, 2007

The soccer team Chelsea FC has banned three fans, and says it may press charges against them, for throwing celery onto the soccer pitch during the FA Cup quarter-final on March 19. Two were arrested at the match; a third was arrested later, someone apparently having turned him in to the authorities as a suspected vegetable-thrower.

According to the report, Chelsea fans have been throwing celery at each other, and singing an "unprintable song" about the vegetable, for many years. (So far, I have been unable to determine the significance of the celery, or what is being said about celery that is unprintable. But only recently has the matter escalated to the point of throwing it onto the soccer pitch. This came to management's attention after referees at two previous matches reported celery sightings, and the club had warned fans that anyone caught throwing it during the March 19 match would be in big trouble.

Another fan was banned for a "pitch incursion," which I assume is British for "running onto the field like a jackass." The club stated yesterday that "[a]ll four people have been banned by the club and three will face court bans depending on the outcome of any criminal proceedings." The report did not say what the penalty might be for being convicted of celery-throwing.

March 27, 2007

In a long-awaited and dramatic decision, the Supreme Court held today, unanimously, that in the context of the Guam Organic Act's debt-limitation provision, 48 U.S.C. section 1423a, Guam's debt limitation must be calculated according to the assessed valuation of property in Guam.

Like we didn't all see that coming. In your face, Supreme Court of Guam!

For those in a fantasy Supreme Court league this year, six points to those who correctly predicted this reversal, three points to those who thought Justice Souter would concur in part and dissent in part, and one point for predicting that Justice Thomas would get this opinion assigned to him. Subtract five points if you knew anything at all about the Guam Organic Act before you read this post (but only two points if you are a resident of Guam).